Read Long Division Online

Authors: Jane Berentson

Long Division (6 page)

BOOK: Long Division
8.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
So yesterday at the quilt show, while we were walking through aisles of colorful, detailed patchwork in a private high school's gymnasium, my mother said, “You know, Annie, I've gotten a few e-mails from David recently.”
“You what?”
“Don't act so surprised. You gave me his e-mail address before he left. I like to know how he's doing. He's such a sweetheart.”
“I know. I just didn't expect you guys to be e-mail buddies. How much does he write you?”
“I don't know. I think I've gotten three e-mails from him. But I wrote him first.” My mother rubbed her fingertips along the border of a small square quilt. “Tight stitching.”
“What do you guys talk about?”
“He tells me about his company. How he misses you.” She nudged me with her elbow as she said this, and somehow, for some reason, I wanted to vomit. Puke all over a blue and white masterpiece called “Paisleys on Parade.” David hadn't told me he was writing my mother, or that she was writing him. It's stupid, but I can't help but feel a little betrayed. He should spend that time writing more to me. Telling me more than the temperature and the condition of his boots. Saying ‘miss you, I love you' in a different way for once. Painting me a picture of his life because from his news and
the
news, I still can't really tell what it's like.
“Oh, and he told me how you joined the knitting group with some of the other wives. That's so great, Annie. I bet the support—”
“What? I did
not
join. I went once. And I'm
not
going back.” I hate it when I talk to my mother this way. It's plain awful. Hearing my words screech so loud and so snotty and so insensitive makes me feel I'm not qualified to be a teacher. Before my mother's cheeks totally dropped, I tried to backpedal. “I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't mean to erupt like that. It's just that I don't think the group is for me. I don't knit. I don't know them. I'd rather just spend the time with the friends I already have . . . and you and Dad, of course.” She smiled.
“David did sound kind of excited about you joining, but I'm sure he'll understand why it's not quite your cup of tea.”
We neared the end of the quilt show. It was set up like a maze. Quilts hanging from portable, wheeling chalkboards and volleyball nets. The PA system was playing the kind of country-string-quartet-type music that sounds like everything is right in the world. The harvest is good. The cattle are healthy. The town well hasn't dished out cholera in decades. There were women at the end of the maze selling fresh fudge and small cuts of fabric. And of course they were smiling at each other like everything really was right in the world. A quilt on every bed! A bed for every human! And I couldn't help but think about Greek/ Roman lady and her endless wartime tapestry. I looked at all the elaborate blankets draped around me—barely swaying in a breeze that had snuck in. And for a moment I did think they were beautiful. And for a moment I did think that maybe Greek/Roman lady knew what she was doing. And for a moment I even considered picking up some fabric and a beginner's quilting book. Fuck, maybe even some goddamn yarn. But then I saw a kid nuzzling his face up to a quilt in a very normal, playful way. He had those sneakers with the lights on the heels and a very faint Kool-Aid mustache. His mother turned around and squawked at him, “Timothy. Timothy, stop that. I told you not to touch the quilts.” Not to touch the quilts! How ridiculous! Blankets are for nuzzling and having sex under and getting crumbs on and puking on if you have to. I started to think about how many normal-sized quilts Greek/Roman lady could have made in the time she wove that ginormous one. How many families could she have helped? Families whose equally lonely mothers didn't have the time or the servants to waste all day crying over a loom and making blankets. What a fucking bitch, I thought.
23
Right there at the end of the quilt maze, my mother could see the scowl on my face. And Timothy's mom is a bitch too, I continued with my hate-fest. Go ahead and touch the quilts, I say! My mother would never snap at me like that. She may be a sneaky boyfriend e-mailer, but she is not a stern, wrist-slapping barker. My mother is warm and soft and touchable. “Annie, what are you frowning about?” she said.
“Oh, nothing. I'm just hungry. Sorry.” I tried to smile.
“Well, come on then. Let's go vote for our favorite quilt and I'll take you to lunch. I know this place with a great terrace. In the fall, they have . . .” I followed my mother to a sickly cute painted mailbox with a slot on the top. We were to vote for our favorite quilt and the winner got some fat ribbon, a gift certificate to
A Stitch in Time,
and a place of honor at next year's show. My mother held the mini number-two pencil to her lips for a second, pulled her eyes up to the top of her head like she was thinking real hard. She looked just like one of my students pausing in a history test. Grasping and searching for some element of truth that could garner at least partial credit. She quickly scribbled something down.
“Come on, Annie. Vote. People really rely on this for feedback.” I grabbed a slip of paper and a pencil and wrote “Puke on Parade” really fast. Before she could see, I slipped it into the mailbox, and we left.
 
That was Saturday. Sunday, my friend Hillary called and asked me to go Rollerblading on the water.
“What? They make water Rollerblades now? How does that work?” I had asked. I don't know how I got so obnoxious. Maybe because I hang out so much with third graders.
“You know what I mean, Annie. We used to do it all the time in college. Go Rollerblading on the water
front.
” I told her yes, even though I didn't really want to go. But I haven't been exercising much lately, and I hadn't seen Hillary since last spring. So we went.
Strapping my skates on, I noticed they felt tighter around the ankles than I'd remembered. Hillary's skates fit perfectly. I watched the white tips of her shiny fingernails carefully buckle the straps. It's hard to talk while Rollerblading, but we managed a decent, half-shouting conversation. Hillary didn't know about David's deployment, though she should have. Our web of friends from college had its kinks and tangents, but the lines usually went through. I knew that Josh Bowers and Maria Rodriguez were getting married. And that James Carver, that slimeball from the crew team, had lost his job selling insurance because of some scam. But Hillary didn't know that David was gone. After the first few minutes of skating, she snagged my attention from a nearby ice cream vendor with her question. “So how's David doing? You guys still together?” Hillary and I were never great friends.
“Yeah, but he's been deployed.” The wind rattled my voice, muffling it in velocity, like it too wanted to obscure the truth.
“He's unemployed? I thought he was still in the army?”
“No, he's been
deployed
. He's in Iraq now.” Hillary stopped adjusting the waistband of her gym shorts and gave me the look that everyone gives me. Like I caught pinkeye from helping orphans. Or like I adopted a two-legged kitten and engineered prosthetic legs to help it walk, but then it died. Or like I just shaved my head (even though I have an unsightly birthmark) and donated the hair to one of those leukemia-patient wig-making charities. Like I'm doing something so brave or making some amazing sacrifice. But when really I did nothing. I fell in love with a nice man who just happens to have a job that has taken him away from me. Who just happens to work for an entity that has a shitload of guns and an odd sense of what constitutes “helping out.”
“Wow, Annie. That's got to be tough.”
“Yes. Yes, it is tough. But it's just a dumb situation. Dumb circumstance.” I looked out to the bay. The tame waters of the Puget Sound were only slightly glistening in the afternoon sun. A few small boats puttered around, and a gray castle of industrial something pumped out steam on the other side of the shore. It was only kind of pretty, but fine to look at while skating.
“Have you guys been able to talk much? When is he coming back? Is he in a dangerous place?” Hillary spat out the usual repertoire of questions, and I forced the exhausted lump of neurons in my brain to pull up the tattered file that contains my usual answers. But I'd rolled to a stop.
My left skate had just run over something soft and lumpy. I wanted it to be ice cream, but it was not. It was dog poo, and I was barely surprised. If anything, I was relieved. The ten gross minutes it took to wheel my skate back and forth on the grass, to fill a littered coffee cup with sea water and flush it through the bearings—those were ten minutes I had to not tell Hillary about my life. The mundane but genuinely sad details of a girl whose boyfriend is at war.
 
Funny thing, shit, how it can distract you from its other forms!
 
Recently, on the telephone . . .
David:
So you're really not going back? Won't they be offended? [pause]
Annie:
Why would they be offended? We just met. I wrote Angie and told her that I already have too much going on and that I also have a book club that meets once a week.
D:
You're in a book club?
A:
No. But I'm sure I will be someday. And I do read a lot. That's kind of like having my own private book club. I didn't want Angie to think that I was quitting the knitters because I didn't enjoy their company.
D:
But you didn't enjoy their company. That's why you quit.
A:
So?
D:
So you could have given them more of a chance. There are guys here that I couldn't stand when I started working full time. But people can grow on you. Eventually you'll find out you
do
have stuff in common and that you
can
have fun together.
A:
I don't want to have fun with them. I have fun at school.
D:
Jeez, Annie.
A:
What?
D:
I thought you were a hard worker. Building new relationships sometimes takes a little work, you know.
A:
I don't want new relationships.
D:
Right.
A:
Right.
D:
Anyway.
 
Later, on my computer:
 
November 1, 2003
 
Dear President Bush,
 
When I met David, I lied to him. I told him I was seventeen and visiting a sister at the university over my spring break. We were at a house party hosted by the soccer team, and he approached me with some lame comment about how the music totally sucked. I hadn't even been paying attention to the music, but was instead counting girls with matching peasant-style tops and making fun of them in my head.
I first noticed David's clean haircut, and after he told me his name, I asked if he was in the military. He explained the whole ROTC scholarship thing to me briefly, and I nodded along the way. Maybe that's why I felt okay lying. Why when he asked for my number, I denied him, subtracting years from my age and inventing some story. Maybe because at that first conversation he seemed to think that this whole free-school/ serve-the-country get-up was a good idea. At that point, maybe I thought he was easily deceived.
It was early in our senior year of college, and soon after the encounter at the party when I ran into him at the library.
“I thought you weren't a student here.” That's all he said. Not even “hi” first. I was squatting to a low shelf, reshelving nineteenth-century Russian literature, and I was suddenly aware that my pants were low and that maybe he could see my butt crack. That's right, Mr. Bush, I said butt crack. I worked at the library to pay the bills. Lots of students do this sort of thing.
“Err, um. I don't. I work here.” I didn't know what else to say.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“Yes, I'm sure. Do you think I'd organize old Russian poems for fun?” I stood up and tugged the back of my pants, making sure all was decent.
“No, are you
sure
you don't go to school here?” All I could do was sigh. I put a crusty maroon volume back on the shelving cart and tried to formulate some socially normal response.
“Yes. I mean, no, I'm not sure. I mean, yes I do go to school here.”
“And you're not seventeen?”
“Yes. I'm not seventeen. You figured it out.”
You see, George. That lying to David about my age thing was stupid and impulsive. It accomplished nothing. I could have easily used an honest form of phone number rejection. All it really did was make things more awkward in the future. And well, yeah, things did work out pretty well. I learned he was more than his haircut, and somehow, amazingly, he learned to trust me. We grew to love each other and have remarkably good premarital sex nearly every day. So what I'm getting at here is quite simple. We all do silly things at strange moments. We make fast decisions based on finding quick fi xes and on what we think will be most safe at the time.
So.
If you could please yank on your powerful strings and bring these soldiers back home in the next seven to ten business days, I'd be very much obliged.
 
Best wishes,
Annie T. Harper, PhD
 
P.S. Please send my regards to your family. Please tell Jenna and Barb how lucky they are that they are not spending twenty hours a week in college shelving books. Though from what I understand, it was remarkably more difficult for them to obtain a decent fake ID.
Gus called me in the fucking middle of the night. He said he needed my help with something. Gus has never called me in the middle of the night. Even when his dad told him more about his mom leaving and even when he lost his virginity and even when he got into Yale. He never rushed to tell me these things. He always waited until the next time we saw each other. He's not really the sort of guy who is pestered by urgency.
BOOK: Long Division
8.35Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Artist's Paradise by Pamela S Wetterman
The Clay Lion by Jahn, Amalie
From Kiss to Queen by Janet Chapman
A Long Day in November by Ernest J. Gaines
Cross by Elle Thorne
Candice Hern by Once a Dreamer
A Forest Charm by Sue Bentley
Guarding January by Sean Michael